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What are the best free online versions of board games?

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Oct 8, 2018

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8 Games Considered

Best free online versions of board games	Price	# Players	Play Time
-- Agricola	-	1-5 (Newer edition -up to 4, All Creatures Big & Small - 2)	30-150 minutes
-- Stratego	-	2	45 Minutes
-- Through the Ages @ Board Gaming Online	-	-	-
-- Arimaa	-	2	15 - 120 Minutes
-- Hanabi @ Board Game Arena	-	-	-

Agricola

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Top Pro

High player interaction for this type of game

The very limited number of actions available to take each round, combined with most resources only being available at 1 or 2 spots means that players are regularly interfering with eachother's plans and constantly being forced to reevaluate their strategy after an opponent blocks them. This leads to high amounts of player interaction and keep you very engaged in the game instead of focusing solely on your player board. See More

Top Con

Can be a very punishing game for new players

Even players who love Agricola regularly joke that its name should be Misery Farm. This is because everything that you fail to do will cost you points, yet it is very difficult to do some of everything. This means that new players have a very low chance of beating someone experienced since they won't fully now what to expect as the game goes on and how to plan for it. See More

Top Pro

Easy to explain, but very difficult to master

The basic premise in Agricola is simple: players take one of their two starting people and, in turn order, use it to select an action. Once an action is selected, it can not be chosen by other players. After everyone has placed their first worker players place their second, again in turn order, followed by 3rd, 4th, and 5th, if applicable. However, the difficulty in Agricola comes from the relatively limited number of action slots available and the sheer number of things players are trying to accomplish over the 14 rounds of the game. See More

Through the Ages @ Board Gaming Online

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Play against real people

The game allows you to play against friends / human opponents. See More

Top Con

Requires Registration

In order to play a game you must first create an account on the site. See More

amou's Experience

future youtubeuse j'croie See More

Top Pro

Multiple versions available

In addition to the Standard version, you may play with the following expansion cards/rules: Czech Polish BGO 2 Spanish Global (Hammurabi Ext 3.0 style) See More

Top Con

No AI

There is currently no option to play against an AI opponent. See More

Top Pro

Complete Game

The online version has exactly the same rules as the table-top version. See More

Top Pro

Highly ranked game on Board Game Geek

Through the Ages is the second highest ranked game on Board Game Geek at the time of writing. See More

Arimaa

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Fluid gameplay

The 4 moves per turn gives Arimaa's tree of possible moves a very high branching factor. (It was invented for AI programmers as a game more difficult to program for than chess, but easier than Go). You can't think several turns ahead like chess (the space of possibilities is too big), instead you have to think in terms of distances and capabilities, giving Arimaa a very fluid feel. See More

Top Con

Quite long to play

A game of Arimaa is very unpredictable and can often lead to a very long session. The time can vary between 15 minutes and 2 hours, so it’s not great if you’re looking for something that you can quickly grab and play through. See More

Top Pro

Active online community

The official site of Arimaa is quite lively and features reviews, downloads, the latest news, an active public forum, and much more. There’s even an online gameroom, so you can play Arimaa against computers or other people in either turn-based or real-time games. There are many people online, so it shouldn’t be a problem to find a game. See More

Top Con

Requires constant engagement

Arimaa can get out of hand quickly because there’s pretty much no way of predicting how future turns will play out. This is because it’s significantly harder to pinpoint four actions that your opponent might do as opposed to one action in similar games to Arimaa. Due to this the game requires the players to continually pay close attention to what they’re doing, which isn’t inherently bad, but can be a bit problematic for people with shorter attention spans or for people who don't want to take the game too seriously and just play it for fun and socialize meanwhile. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn

Arimaa is a game suitable for both young and old, it was made to be intuitively simple but with a lot of depth. Even the setup follows this premise - you set up the figures in two rows like in chess, but you can place them in any way you like. The rules are simple – in your turn you have four actions. You can either move a figure four times, move four figures one time, or do any combination in between. All figures can move forwards, backwards, and sideways apart from rabbits who can’t go backwards. You can use two actions on a stronger piece to push or pull your opponents’ weaker figures. These stronger figures also “freeze” adjacent weaker pieces, preventing them from moving unless there’s a friendly piece next to them. If a figure happens to walk into one of the four trap squares or get pushed/pulled into one without a friendly piece next to it, then it is removed from the game. The first player to get a rabbit to reach the opposing side wins. The game can also be won by removing or immobilizing all your opponent’s rabbits. See More

Hanabi @ Board Game Arena

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Replayable

The game encourages replayability because it’s one of those games that you get better at the more you play. Players will always be trying to beat their high-scores. To make the game harder or easier you can easily remove or add clue tokens or lightning tokens (extra lives). The game also has an included “expansion” – the rainbow-colored cards. These add two more possible variations to the gameplay. You can play them as the sixth color and just add 5 more points to the maximum, or you can make the game a bit more difficult by having players give clues about the rainbow card as if it was one of the five default colors. See More

Top Con

Requires commitment

Hanabi could be considered an exercise in memory, teamwork, and communication, so this isn’t the game to play if you’re in a distraction full environment or if you want to casually socialize with your buddies. Furthermore, it’s important to limit your table talk because someone might accidentally say too much in a clue or pass off some important information in a remark here or there. Showing frustration or excitement about a play that someone’s about to do is also bad because it might impact the player’s action. See More

Top Pro

No quarterbacking issues

The game successfully evades the popular issue of many cooperative games where a player ends up taking over the game and telling others what to do. In Hanabi this is pretty much impossible because there is no way to see your own cards, so everyone is forced to work together. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn

Hanabi is a truly simple and very accessible game to people of all ages. Players stack cards of one color to finish five firework displays consisting of five cards each. Players are dealt five cards that they hold outwards to other players. On your turn you can perform one of three actions – give a clue, discard a card, or play a card. By flipping one of the eight clue tokens you can point out something about another player’s hand, for example, “these cards are yellow”, “these are twos”, etc. Discarding a card restores a clue token, but you must be careful with what you discard because there is a limited number of cards of each type, you might discard a card that doesn’t let you complete the firework. If you play a card that doesn’t fit any of the current piles, then that is an illegal play, the card is discarded and one of the lightning tokens is turned over. As soon as all three lightning tokens are turned, the game is over. The game can also end when the draw pile is empty or if you successfully stack all the fireworks. See More

Top Pro

A wonderful exercise in teamwork as you have to rely entirely on clues from other players

Why did the other player give that specific clue? Should you play, discard, or give a clue in return? If you give them a clue, how will they interpret it? It is these meaningful and occasionally tense decisions that make Hanabi an absolutely excellent game for couples who like to work together to solve problems. See More

Stone Age @ Board Game Arena

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Highly replayable

Each game of Stone Age will turn out differently. Obviously, your dice rolls are going to lead to different results, and the buildings and civilization cards you draw are going to be in a new order. There are many paths to victory, you can always try a different strategy. Best part is, no strategy is superior, you get points from many things, so don’t be afraid to experiment. See More

Top Con

Can be quite long

Depending on the number of players, the game can take 1 to 2 hours to play through, which is alright for more experienced board gamers, but it can be a big turn-off for new players or children who might lose their enthusiasm as the game progresses. See More

Top Pro

Beautiful aesthetics and theme

The visual design of Stone Age is very detailed and thematic. Both the artwork and the components look great and highly compliment the gameplay. The gameboard and the player sheets feature stunning artwork of prehistoric scenery, the first player token is a silly drawing of a sitting chieftain, and the cards have some thematic nuances – stone tablets, figurines, prehistoric boats, etc. The resource tokens resemble what they’re supposed to be – food, wood, gold, bricks, and stone. The player tokens are colorful and patterned meeples. See More

Top Con

Luck dependant

At its core Stone Age is a dice rolling game. You choose what you’re rolling for and how many dice you’re going to use when sending workers to a resource gathering space, and your roll will impact what you get. Some civilization cards also include dice rolling to decide which players get what resource. The number is always rounded down, for example, if you sent two workers to gather wood, you’d roll two dice. One piece of wood costs 3. If you rolled 8 in total, then you’d get only two pieces of wood and you’d be missing one more pip. See More

Top Pro

Easy and accessible

Stone Age is a game suited for people of all ages and gaming backgrounds because it’s easy to learn and it provides quite a bit of strategic depth. The basic gist of Stone Age is easy – there are three phases in a round: placing workers, resolving actions, and feeding the tribe. Players take turns placing their workers on empty spaces on the gameboard, signified by circles. There are resource areas, special areas, civilization cards, and hut tiles. There can’t be more workers than circles in an area. After all the workers are distributed, players resolve actions in any order they choose. Depending on where you placed your workers, you either roll dice for resources or receive other bonuses in from special areas – tools, civilization cards, buildings, food generation, etc. When all actions are complete, players must feed their tribes. This is done by returning the food resource to the pile. You pay one food per worker. If you generate food from the agriculture area, then you subtract that amount from the total. See More

Carcassonne @ Elite Games

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AI Opponents

Top Con

Low difficulty AI

Though the game allows you to play against an AI opponent, the AI doesn't offer much of a challenge. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn for beginners

The rules are pretty basic for Carcassonne, with first time players being able to grasp its concepts quite quickly, making Carcassonne a great gateway game. Every turn the player draws one tile from the pile. They then must place the tile adjacent to a tile that has already been placed in a way that the edges match. There are four types of terrain on the tiles – roads, cities, monasteries, and grassland. After the tile is placed the player can choose to put a player figure, a.k.a. a meeple, on the tile to potentially score points. If a meeple is placed on a road, then the player will score one point for every road tile until the road ends in an intersection or a city. If the meeple is placed on a city, the player will receive two points for every city tile until the city is fully walled off. If the player chooses to place the meeple in a monastery, then they will receive one point per tile until the monastery is fully surrounded by tiles. Lastly, if the meeple is placed on grassland, then it’ll only score points at the very end of the game, giving three points for every city in the field. The player with the most points wins. See More

Top Con

Highly random

As is typical for a game with a drawing mechanic, almost every action in the game is influenced by whatever tile is drawn and where a player has chosen to place it, so it’ll benefit him the most. The randomness is enhanced by the fact that the players only draw one tile at a time, so you must take what you get. See More

Top Pro

Simple, but allows for lots of thinking if you want

The game is very accessible to beginners, but it allows for quite a bit of strategic play when you get more familiar with the concept. You can either go for long-term strategies with farms, or for quick point-grabs; you can build your own cities in peace or try to mess with your opponent whenever possible. A lot of tactics come in the form of cutthroat play – trapping other players’ meeples, stealing cities, and getting to share points. Moreover, the last turns of the game can also influence the outcome a lot – players receive some points for unfinished creations as well. See More

Top Con

May be a little light for hardcore boardgame players

The game itself is not very deep in design or play, which may be a turn off for the more hardcore of boardgame players though can be good for newcomers. See More

Top Pro

Near-endless replayability

Carcassonne will pretty much never feel dull, there are so many possibilities and variables in the game not only because of the randomness, but also because of the simplicity and the variation count. Carcassonne is going to be a different game every time because of the tiles you and your opponents draw and where you choose to place them. There are over 70 tiles in the base set, which amounts to a lot of possible combinations. See More

Top Pro

Accessible

Because of the simple rules Carcassonne is very easy to get back into even after big breaks and it’s great to teach to other people. This means that the people you play with can change without any problems and you can play the game with anyone – children, your parents, your friends, or your partner. See More

Top Pro

Engaging

The gameplay is dynamic, and everyone’s constantly engaged, managing their meeples and calculating which part of the board is worth fighting over. See More

Top Pro

Quick to play

In a regular expansion-less game of Carcassonne it can take 30 – 45 minutes to blast through the approximately 70 tiles. See More

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